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Roberto Osuna’s season stops just short of something special: DiManno

Young closer, just 20, took the loss in Game 6 Friday night. No fabled ending, not for Osuna and not for the Blue Jays.

Roberto Osuna had a brilliant season with the Blue Jays as a 20-year-old rookie, registering 20 saves in 23 opportunities. He took the loss in Game 6 Friday night, but he wasn't the team's undoing. (Steve Russell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

KANSAS CITY—A sunny morning at spring training and Roberto Osuna is talking about his childhood.

Which wasn’t much of one, childhood that is. Except for the baseball, which made him happy, compensated for everything.

Quitting school at age 12 to labour in the fields, picking tomatoes and potatoes, because his family — with a dad who pitched in the Mexican League for 22 years — was poor.

But here he was, just 20, an international free agent and non-roster invitee, less than two years removed from Tommy John surgery, turning heads. At first, primarily a go-to translator for his good friend, rawboned beanpole pitcher Miguel Castro, who had eyeballs popping with a fastball that hit 100 m.p.h. on the radar gun.

They broke camp together, the 1-2 phenom arms, with Castro designated as closer. He would falter. Osuna, who succeeded into that role, did not.

Some seven months later, Castro was a footnote memory, among the pitching prospects — along with Jose Reyes — traded to Colorado for Troy Tulowitzki. And Osuna, still only 20, youngest player in Major League Baseball, was on the hill in the bottom of the eighth of a do-or-die Game 6 game in the American League Championship Series.

Think back to where you were, what you were doing, as a 20 year old. Perhaps in university or back-packing through Europe, not a care in the world, one foot in adulthood, the other in the languid dimension of youth.

Osuna, instead, was staring down the heart of the Royals batting order, in an elimination ballgame interrupted by a 45-minute rain delay, just long enough to disrupt the momentum established by Jose Bautista’s second home run of the night, knotting the score 3-3 in the eighth.

And now it’s all down to Roberto, to hold off those opportunistic K.C. hitters, with an offence built around singles and doubles and base-running speed.

Lorenzo Cain, the dynamic centrefielder who is 6-for-20 in the post-season including a nine-game hitting streak that was halted in Toronto, strides to the plate to lead off. Osuna starts him with a fastball that Cain swings through. Slider for a ball, slider fouled off, slider for a ball, changeup for a ball, 98-m.p.h. fastball fouled, 97 fastball fouled. On the eighth pitch of the at-bat, Osuna’s changeup is below the knees and Cain doesn’t chase.

“Those were good pitches,” Osuna says later, in a losing clubhouse. “He knows me really good. He knew what was coming. I thought I got him with the change-up. It was just a little bit low.”

Did we mention speed? First baseman Eric Hosmer puts wood on a piece of a slider, drilling it to right field. Cain was motoring on contact, hell on wheels, rounding second, never pausing at the hot corner with third base coach Mike Jirschele wind-milling go-go-go!

Inexplicably, Bautista — who’s got a bazooka arm to the plate — heaves the ball to second instead, where Tulowitzki couldn’t get on the ball for a clean exchange on the relay to home. But there was never any reasonable prospect of catching Cain. He came blazing across the plate, running straight into a second straight World Series for the Royals, as it turned out.

Because Toronto’s venerated offence couldn’t get pinch-runner Dalton Pompey 90 feet to home with none out in the ninth. He stole second, stole third, but was left stranded, Dioner Navarro struck out, Ben Revere struck out, Josh Donaldson grounded to first — each thwarted by imperious closer Wade Davis.

Not a bunt, not a sac fly, not a morsel of, well, K.C.-style ball, in a game where Toronto went 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position. That was their undoing.

And Osuna takes the loss.

No fabled ending, not for Osuna and not for the Blue Jays.

“I feel sad and happy at the same time,” said Osuna later, standing up to the media throng while teammates tucked into their post-game meal (crab legs on the menu), discussing events quietly among themselves, Donaldson punching teammates on the shoulder, Bautista draining a bottle of beer before disappearing into the showers.

“Sad because we’re obviously out, right? But we worked really hard this year and I’m happy about what we did all year.

“I just tried to do my job.”

He’d done it so commendably all season — 20 saves in 23 save opportunities. But two of those blown saves were in September, a month in which observers noted fretfully that Osuna was being hit hard, rescued often by stalwart defence on balls to the wall. Perhaps he was fatigued, maybe scouting reports had zeroed on vulnerabilities. In the ALCS there was also a torn fingernail on his pitching hand, which Osuna himself revealed to a Spanish media reporter — a “dumb kid” admission in the words of a club insider. But that wasn’t why Osuna came a cropper on Friday night at Kauffman Stadium; merely a minutiae detail by then.

Back home in Mexico, Hurricane Patricia was pounding over the coastland and moving inland just as Osuna took the mound. A reporter asked if that had been on his mind, maybe a distraction? “No, not really. No excuses.’’

A season that came out of nowhere for this remarkable young man and was stopped just short of somewhere special.

“So I go home and I’m always going to remember this.’’

All the good, the far lesser bad, and the hardly ever ugly of Blue Jays baseball, 2015.

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